Description of the attraction
In Europe, there are a sufficient number of natural phenomena, but even among them, this cave is in a special place. It is located on the slope of the famous Chatyrdag mountain. From here, the entire central Crimea appears in a beautiful panorama.
The path to the cave is not easy and lies through a deep well. Only by going down into it, you can get into the cave. This happened for the first time in 1927. Having overcome the descent into the well, the geologists found themselves in a magnificent hall, the length of which was about a hundred meters.
The cave gained worldwide fame after the discoveries of local scientists and speleologists. One and a half thousand new unknown galleries and halls were discovered as a result of their painstaking work in 1969-1982. These interior spaces were covered with calcite crystals of various colors, also called "cave flowers". The cave is unique, first of all, for its various calcite formations.
A huge contribution to the preservation and exploration of the cave belongs to speleologists from Simferopol, members of the Onyx-tour speleo center.
The excursion route through the cave lasts two hours; tourists need to walk eight hundred and fifty meters. Speleologists have made a new, more convenient entrance to the cave - at the place where the bed of an ancient river once was. First, tourists enter the North Gallery. Then the road goes down. The gallery is about six to seven meters wide. Around the bend, an amazing picture appears: palm-like stalagmites, grape-like corallites. The excursion route from the Northern Gallery leads to the Main Hall. It is majestic and large-scale: height - forty-two meters, length - one hundred and twenty meters. A natural well is a link to the surface. The depth of the well is fourteen meters. The sun's rays passing through it illuminate the hall with emerald light.
For twenty-five years the cave has been under the protection of speleologists. And later a part of the cave was opened for sightseers. During the preparatory work, previously unknown rooms were discovered, the remains of the most ancient fauna.
The paleontological museum has been open in the cave since 2000. It demonstrates the most interesting specimens found. You can see the skeletons of animals belonging to the period of the last glacier: cave bear, mammoth, reindeer, woolly rhinoceros, fossil horse, etc.
Also to the complex of the cave belongs the building of the scientific center - an institute dealing with speleology and karstology. It appeared in 2006. It also houses the Crimean Museum of Speleology Development.
